Introduction

Valet Hustle is a fun and frantic combination of resource management and puzzle elements. You take the role of either Akira or Ren and you're responsible for managing the Valet Service at various glamorous venues around the world, starting in Tokyo and then moving on to New York.

Valet Hustle has been designed from the ground up as an iPhone game and makes maximum use of all available resources on the iPhone from the accelerometer to multitouch gestures.

Gameplay

Valet Hustle has been launched with six levels, three of which are based in Tokyo and three in New York, with more to come as level pack purchases over the next few months. In order to advance from one level to the next, you have to hit a specific revenue goal per level. These goals steadily increase in cost as you progress further into the game.

The gameplay is based around three core elements:
Parking incoming cars for customers
Delivering cars to customers
Managing Valets on your staff

The combination of these simple elements create a game that requires both forward planning and quick thinking in order to advance through the levels.

As customers come into a parking lot, you have to park their cars within a specific timeframe in order to keep them happy. Otherwise, they’ll leave the lot and some of your satisfaction rating will be lost – along with a lost opportunity to generate more revenue.

It’s also important to consider where cars are parked – you need to make sure that the vehicles can be quickly retrieved when their owners exit a venue.

As with incoming cars, exiting customers have to be served within a specific timeframe. If you are too slow, the customers won’t pay for parking and your satisfaction rating will deplete.

If your satisfaction rating reaches zero, then the game will be over and you will have to restart the last level that you were playing.

Things start to get tricky when a large number of customers want to drop off and pick up their cars simultaneously. You will have to be very quick-witted to balance customer pick-ups and drop-offs, all the while trying to keep every customer satisfied. Fortunately, Valet Hustle offers players a number of tools that will assist you in keeping customers happy:
• Satisfaction Cues: Natural visual and audio indicators present themselves when a customer is starting to get annoyed – customers waving their fists or car engines revving are two examples.
• Customer Radar: As you won’t be able to see all of the lot at any one time, it can be sometimes be difficult to locate cars. The customer radar shows you where all the cars are located and associates them with each waiting customer.
• Additional Valets: For every $500 (amount varies per level) that the customer earns they will be awarded an automated Valet. These Valets can be managed by simply double tapping on a car you want parked or a customer you want picked up. The automated Valets aren’t very smart and can only park cars and pickup customers if there is a clear path between the parking space and customers; if there isn’t a clear path then you will have to move other cars to make room.

The puzzle element of the game really starts to come into play in later levels where there are more cars to be parked than there are parking spaces. This forces you to double, triple and sometimes even quadruple park in order to fit a car in the lot. As a result, you have to move a number of cars around to clear a path when maneuvering vehicles.

You therefore need to plan ahead when you bring new cars into the lot. You want to move as few cars as possible before delivering a car to a customer, as moving cars takes time and can deplete your satisfaction rating very quickly.

Just to add a little additional complication, in later levels the line of cars waiting to come in can block certain spaces; extracting cars from those spaces very difficult.

Fortunately you also have access to a bonus: VIP customers. If you treat a VIP well, then you will find yourself getting massive tips. If utilized correctly, you can therefore use VIPs to race through a level very quickly.

Graphics

All of the venues in Valet Hustle are represented by spectacular highly detailed 3D models that are unparalleled by any other game on the iPhone. There are also a huge variety of cars in each level, all also highly detailed 3D models.

To see an overview of the level, you are able to zoom out with a pinch gesture. Similarly, you can zoom in to solve a parking problem or simply to enjoy the detail of the 3D graphics.

Even further, there are a number of computer generated 3D cutscenes that introduce you to the backstory behind the character that you selected.

Everything in Valet Hustle has been rendered in such a way that the whole experience makes you feel as if you’re taking control of a character in a high quality anime movie.

Audio

Unlike most games on the iPhone, the audio environment is a core part of the Valet Hustle experience. Sounds generated range from simple effects indicating customer satisfaction all the way through to professionally mixed audio during the cut scenes.

This is a game that you will want to play with your headphones on and turned up loud!